BACKGROUND: As digital media use has increasingly become a part of daily life for adolescents, it is critical to ascertain any potential link between digital media use and poorer mental health. Many studies have explored the relationship between screen time and psychiatric symptoms, but most of these studies have been limited by cross-sectional and participant recall. Moreover, many of these studies examine youth digital media use as a whole, rather than examining qualitative use. This study uses smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment to capture daily relationships between anxiety and depression symptoms and quality and quantity of smartphone use.
METHODS: Youth aged 12 to 22 years-old were recruited from Cambridge Health Alliance’s outpatient psychiatry clinics to participate in the study. Participants were asked to use the mindLAMP app daily for six weeks to record depression and anxiety symptoms (via PHQ-8 and GAD-7 screeners), as well as provide daily screen time and three most frequently used apps obtained from their smartphone’s screen time report feature. Patient psychiatric diagnosis and demographic data were obtained from the medical record upon study enrollment. Multilevel mixed effects regression models were used to assess relationships between daily depression and anxiety symptoms and digital media use; linear regression models assessed relationships between psychiatric diagnoses and average screen and social media time over the course of the study.
RESULTS: The study recruited a total of 51 youths. Frequent use of a specific type of digital media was not related to an increase in daily depression or anxiety symptoms. While no one category of psychiatric diagnosis was related to higher or lower average screen time, a statistically significant relationship was observed between daily GAD-7 score and daily time spent on social media (p=0.004) and percent of daily screen time that was spent on social media (p=0.01) with increased daily GAD-7 scores. Daily PHQ-8 scores were also positively correlated to daily time spent on social media (p=0.023).
CONCLUSIONS: Our findings support those of prior studies that a significant relationship exists between anxiety, depression, and time spent on screens. It is less evident whether a specific type of digital media use may be more or less associated with these symptoms. More focused research with digital phenotyping or ecological momentary assessment may help to determine whether digital media use causes the worsening of psychiatric symptoms or alternatively, is being used to help manage them. Either way, mental health clinicians should educate their adolescent patients about these existing relationships and encourage patient self-awareness regarding personal patterns of digital media use. / 2025-02-20T00:00:00Z
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/48164 |
| Date | 21 February 2024 |
| Creators | Doble, Nicole Victoria |
| Contributors | Zeldich, Ella, Gansner, Meredith |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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